Integrated radar-communication systems will play an important role in the future battlefield scenarios by decreasing the interference, volume, weight, and power consumption of equipment and promoting information fusion with an enhanced network. An active electronically scanned array radar system is ideal for such scenarios. However, a few studies have focused on the modeling and detection of communication signals for such integrated systems. In this paper, an array division strategy is developed, and a low-complexity signal detection scheme based on the generalized approximate message-passing (GAMP) algorithm is implemented. Furthermore, a quantization model is introduced into the output function of the GAMP algorithm. The method effectively provides communication signal detection with low-precision quantization and outperforms the linear minimum mean square error-based algorithm at the same precision levels. Overall, an energy-efficient radar-communication strategy is developed to promote the application of such systems in the future battlefield scenarios. INDEX TERMS Integrated radar-communication system, GAMP algorithm, low-precision quantization algorithm, energy efficient. I. INTRODUCTION In the future integrated battlefield of sea, land, air and space, military platforms such as tanks, airplanes, and ships will be loaded with diverse electronic devices to enhance their interoperability and probability of survival [1], [2]. Various problems, such as interference, volume, weight, and power consumption issues, linked to these electronic devices will become increasingly serious [3], [4]. An integrated radarcommunication system can largely alleviate or even solve the above problems by sharing hardware resources such as antennas and radio frequencies [5], [6]. Determining how to integrate radar and communication systems is crucial for improving the comprehensive performance of military platforms. The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Qinghua Guo. Active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar has a flexible radio frequency (RF) beamforming capability and multifunction parallel execution capability [7]; therefore, it is suitable for the carrier platform in integrated radarcommunication systems. AESA radar was used to conduct communication experiments in [8] and [9], but there is little research on system design and modeling for simultaneously employed radar and communication functions. In fact, since the communication signal and the radar echo are received through the same antenna array, it is necessary to reasonably divide the array. On the one hand, the integrated radar-communication system must communicate with many objects in different directions to establish a complex communication network. On the other hand, the influence on radar detection performance due to the use of some antenna elements for communication should be minimized. Therefore, based on AESA radar, this paper designs a method
